


Children of the Wild Ones

by bellefire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha!Stiles, Derek Has Issues, Deucalion is a creep, Found Family, Good Peter Hale, Kate Argent Warning, M/M, Pack Fic, Roadtrips, The kids get their shit together, Torture, Violence, Werewolf!Stiles, alpha pack, canon divergent at the end of season 2, implied peter/stiles - Freeform, non-con stiles/deucalion, unbeta’d
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2018-11-07 14:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11061099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellefire/pseuds/bellefire
Summary: One turned corner was all it took—a single split second decision.A death.Stiles could never decide if that turn had been a wrong one or a right one.In which Stiles is turned, gets a pack and takes a roadtrip to Mexico with people he used to not even like but are now somehow family, but first: murder.





	1. Desperado

 

**Children of the Wild Ones**

**Part One: Desperado**

“ _Sitting in an Old Monte Carlo_

_We’ve both had our hearts broke, uh huh_

_Take it easy_

_I’m not trying to go against you_

_I can be a lone wolf with ya_ ”

 

 

One turned corner was all it took—a single split second decision.

 A death.

Stiles could never decide if that turn had been a wrong one or a right one.  Dubious morality aside, there would never be any regret in his heart.  He would never know how things would have turned out otherwise so he doesn’t think about it too much.  Except for when he hears the name.  Argent.  Argent sat like cigarette ash on the back of Stiles’ tongue, he understood Peter’s cold hatred and Derek’s constant caged-animal fear all due to a name.

Stiles refused watch anyone else die and he was so fucking tired of being hurt and threatened.  He knew the only reason he was able to surprise Gerard at all was because he was so pathetically weak, pathetically human.  Not the same kind of human as hunters, Stiles had been the soft type of human that screamed _prey prey prey_ to every sharp-eyed monster in a twenty-mile radius.

Gerard Argent was a monster every bit he was a human man.  Neither made a difference when Stiles grabbed a wickedly curved knife that was already sticky with werewolf blood from the little torture trolley used on Boyd and Erica and shoved it into the old man’s side before Stiles could be pummeled again.  Someone else maybe would have left it at that.  Ran.  Prey always ran.  That brutal thought had him pulling out the knife and spearing it into Gerard’s neck instead.  He dragged the blade out and stood shell-shocked as a spray of hot blood splashed across him.  Stiles stopped a reflexive lick of his lips and shoved all his panic away.  Stowing his shit to have a panic attack about later was an art form Stiles perfected while his mom was dying, he’d be damned if he was going to lose it over another dead Argent.

Erica whimpered behind him, she and Boyd spasmed helplessly against the incessant stream of electricity that coursed through their bodies.  Stiles’ hands shook when he turned off the electricity but stopped by the time he got to roughly cutting them down, they dropped like nine tons of bad werewolf attitude onto the basement floor unable to stop twitching. 

After a minute of gasping for breath they told him they were going to leave.  They didn’t know what to do anymore and they looked at Stiles like he did, as if Gerard’s blood dripping down his face gave him some sort of divine knowledge.

Maybe it did because the only thing he can think to say was, “I’ll help you.”

Humans weren’t naturally predisposed to pack bonds, they didn’t really feel them readily as wolves.  Stiles wouldn’t have recognized the sharp way his heart became threaded to Derek’s fleeing betas at his words into two fragile bonds made of string dripping red. 

Stiles wiped his prints off everything even knowing Chris Argent would likely cover it all up because his daddy didn’t raise no idiot.  The only thing that mattered was getting the hell out of there fast and as far as they could get.  Cutting through the woods at night wasn’t what Stiles would ever call his best idea however they didn’t have much of a choice.  Hunters had boots on the ground in the streets, his newly acquired wolves could smell them and Stiles had werewolves on his side, even if they looked strangely vulnerable, what could have possibly been in the woods worse than them?

Of fucking course they ran straight into the clawed hands of the Alpha Pack.

***

Deucalion took a particular shine to Stiles in that ‘Stiles can’t shut the fuck up literally to save his life’ sort of way every Big Bad Stiles encountered seemed to have a hard-on for.  One of these days he was going to learn, but that implied letting the bastards know you’re afraid or at least admitting to their faces you were afraid.  He might genuinely be incapable of that.

Kali threw Erica and Boyd into a vault with a girl Stiles didn’t recognize while Deucalion dragged Stiles into an old office to oh so sweetly interrogate him about Derek and oddly enough, Scott, in a worse reenactment of Gerard.  Worse because Stiles was scared of Deucalion in a way Gerard could have never managed.  Deucalion was blind.  Except for when he wasn’t.   Glowing neon red eyes bored into him, swept over every trembling part of him and Stiles forced himself to not look away.  Blatant want disappeared beneath Deucalion’s beta form.  Claws dragged down his throat huffing hot air just beneath his ear.

“We always have a use for a beta.  One of my own making.  It’s been a while but exceptions can always be made.”  Deucalion grasped the nape of his neck and forced his head back.  They both knew Stiles wasn’t going to give him any information, the thing was Deucalion seemed to like the fact that he was so loyal.  “So much loyalty with very little cause,” Deucalion whispered thickly against his neck, “I’ll give you a pack worth being loyal to.”

Funny how people thought Stiles was brave, he never thought of himself that way and likely never would.  He wasn’t brave he just had no filter and an attitude problem.  Stiles grinned at the werewolf he was sure was about to kill him, “Do your worst.”

Stiles thought of Peter Hale when Deucalion’s jaws opened wide, distending so much like a fucking snake Stiles nearly laughed.  Deucalion doesn’t ask if he wanted the bite he just shoved Stiles up a wall so hard his skin tore open and latched onto a pale hip immovable as a bear trap.  The fangs went so deep they grazed bone and Stiles glared into the Deucalion’s eyes until he couldn’t anymore.

Stiles woke up surrounded by Erica and Boyd feeling broken all over.  Everything was so hot, boiling, he pushed them away only to find the source of the inferno was all him, inside, and he couldn’t escape it.

“The bite’s healed.”  Said the mystery girl from across the vault.  She was pretty in a familiar way, dark-haired and severe, if a bit grimy.

“That’s good, right?”  Stiles barely heard Erica’s angry inquiry through his haze

“He’ll turn.”  The girl sounded so certain then her eyes flashed beta gold.  Lovely, a werewolf who actually knew werewolf stuff and was willing to share.  Stiles had a thousand questions for her but he blacked out again before anything other than a strangled pained sigh could escape him lips.

Eventually Stiles was more conscious and less human, he admittedly nearly blacked out again when the dark haired girl finally cough up a name.  Cora Hale.  She didn’t understand why he laughed so hard.  He laughed and laughed until Kali dragged him out by his ankles and batted him around like a cat playing with a scared little mouse.

Then Deucalion would come.

Deucalion always came just as Stiles was getting the worst of it and stopped Kali from going any further.  He’d run his fingers through Stiles’ hair and spoke soft and sweet.  Knight in shining armor.  Stiles would cling to him.  Let himself be soothed but as soon as Stiles would flinch away from a touch back into the vault he went starting the cycle over.  Stiles knew more about Stockholm Syndrome than most.  His dad was the sheriff and he was a naturally curious sort.  Good at retaining seemingly useless information.  Turned out, nothing was ever truly useless.

Deucalion wanted his loyalty.  Wanted him dependent and willing.  Stiles could work with that, he just needed a little time.

Telling the time inside the vault was impossible.  Boyd had been trying to keep track via the classic scoring of the walls but lost it around the third or fourth torture session.  Deucalion kept his hands clean while Kali and Ennis partied with car batteries and old fashioned flaying via razor sharp claws until the scent of the beta’s blood on the cold floor were indistinguishable from one another.  Stiles hardly ever saw the twins.  They were young, and kept school hours, he could deduce what that meant and hated them all the more for it.  Mr. Harris probably loved them.

The other betas were used to him filling the silence, telling stories to pass the time or keep the nightmares at bay.  He’d told Cora all about her brooding brother, who was the only reason she came back to Beacon Hills.  In a different situation Stiles would have not told her all he knew but then either one of them could die soon and she deserved to know.  About Peter.  About the Argents.  And of course Derek.  Derek whose intentions were only ever to survive.  Derek who was an asshole and wary of everyone and beautiful—who Stiles would really like to get to punch in the face one day and maybe kiss and maybe punch again.

Cora scoffed wearily, “You sound like you’re in love with him.”

The thing was he wasn’t in love because he was not a fucking masochist, but he could be and that was even scarier.

“Do you think he’s looking for us?”  Erica asked.  Her head lay in Boyd’s lap while he combed through her long messy locks with gentle fingers.  Stiles was shoulder to shoulder with Boyd, their backs against the strange tingling stone of the vault.  There was something off about the stone, he just didn’t know what and was too exhausted to really ponder it.

“Yes.”  Stiles said without doubt. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Erica frowned up at him, “Why not?”

“Because we’re getting out of here tomorrow or I’m going to die tomorrow and won’t be around to worry about it.  You know how much I love silver linings, Catwoman.”

Cora limped forward, closer to them than she’d ever come, “What do you need us to do?”

Another fragile string pierced Stiles’ heart.  Pack, his wolf howled, mine.

***

The next time Kali took him Stiles mouthed off more than ever, spurring Kali to go harder on him.  By the time Deucalion bothered to show up his back was shredded.  Alpha claws go deep and took longer to heal, nothing like hands on learning.  His broken arm and jaw right themselves okay on their own within a few minutes but the lacerations weren’t going away any time soon.  Shifting would have helped.  He hadn’t wolfed out yet beyond eyes and teeth, not the expected full beta shift.  They had to have been there for months now.  Full moons have come and gone and none of them had felt the pull, the knowledge had only put more stress on them all.  It was fine.  All Stiles needed was his teeth anyway. Deucalion scooped Stiles up unconcerned with the blood being smeared over his pristine button-up, he shushed Stiles’ pained whimpers and took the barest amount of his pain.

Stiles swallowed his pride and bared his neck when they reached the abandoned office Deucalion favored.  For all Derek and Scott’s talk of instinct the part of him that was wolf, and really it didn’t feel like a part as much as his whole being, didn’t whimper at the powerful alpha.  No, Stiles’ wolf railed against his skin.  Submission made his blood curdle. 

Swallowing pride was a lot easier than swallowing down the bile that threatened to rise every time he allowed himself to be touched.  Deucalion panted against the curve of his neck, boiling hot and wet.  An aura of smug satisfaction surrounded the alpha in an oppressive miasma.  Stiles fed into that with every purposefully hesitant roll of his hips.  So, so, hesitant, a stilted surrender that had Deucalion gripping hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to distract Stiles from the older man brutalizing his mouth.  Stiles kissed back, he moved tentatively down Deucalion’s jawline in a way he’d only ever seen done in crappy free porn and tongued at the tendons he found there.  Deucalion let him, settled even further back on the desk confident in his victory.  Stiles thrusted forward particularly hard, Deucalion released the faintest of surprised gasps the moment right before Stiles widened his mouth making room for his extended fangs.

Tearing open Deucalion’s throat was easy.  In hindsight.  Stiles had grown a little stronger thanks to the other betas giving him their measly rations of food for a solid week and surprise was apparently his faithful weapon of choice, plus fangs of course.  The bad guys kept mistaking Stiles for prey and paying for it in turn.  Deucalion scarcely gurgled as blood poured out of him.  Stiles had the disturbing urge to keep going.  To eat his quarry whole until the only thing left of the man who terrorized him was gleaming white bones licked clean, maybe he’d crack those bones open and suck out the marrow too.  Deucalion’s body trembled then went totally slack.

The second Deucalion died white hot energy like and unlike the power of the Change surged through Stiles.  The world tilted on its axis as Stiles accepted the alpha spark within him. Everything was so much more, he felt invincible, unstoppable, impossible.  Stronger than he’d ever felt in his entire life.  He was the Alpha of Alphas and while that rang true with the wolf the pack bonds were all wrong.  An alpha was nothing if their pack ponds weren’t _real_.

Stiles didn’t get the chance to adjust to the onslaught of _everything,_ Erica’s agonized scream had him sprinting away from the cooling corpse and back down into the vault.  The second part of their plan was being put into place.  Stiles rounded the last corner to the vault at the same second Kali lifted Erica into the air ready to break her neck.  The younger girl was already near death even without the extra measure she would have probably died left unattended.  Kali, Stiles knows from personal experience, was a fan of extra measures.  He made no noise creeping behind the other alpha nor was Kali paying attention.  He plunged his claws deep into her spine from behind, not severing, holding.  She was nearly as strong as Deucalion was.  And she’ll be every bit as dead.  This was a part of the plan too.  More of a necessity, Erica wouldn’t live otherwise.

“Erica!  Erica, c’mon!  You can do this!”  Stiles ordered, his voice carried a new authoritative timber that made Erica’s eyes glow gold in response.

Erica struggled to drag herself across the dirty floor but Stiles couldn’t help her and hold Kali down at the same time.  He was barely holding Kali back as it was.  Erica swiped a piece of rebar from the ground that smelled of her own blood and pulled herself up.  She had always been good at pulling herself up all on her own, Stiles was viciously proud of her.  The bar went through Kali’s chest with difficulty, Erica reaching up with shaking hands to snap her neck in her own brand of extra measure looked difficult too. They let Kali fall limply to the ground.

Erica crumpled to her knees after it was done.  Deep gashes all across her face started to heal and her eyes bled from gold to a blazing ruby red.

Ennis’ roar echoed throughout the building.  His bond to Deucalion’s power was made of fishing line and hooks, he’d barely felt it when Deucalion died but he felt his love come to her end at the hands of a couple of beaten, half-starved teenagers.  Quickly Stiles and Erica pulled open the massive bank vault door.  Cora charged straight out into Ennis as he too busted through a set of double doors that led to the main part of the bank.  Cora was fierce and fast despite her condition.  Every inch a Hale. 

She still wasn’t an alpha.

Together Stiles and Erica help her bring down the mountain of a werewolf.  Cora was much more efficient in tearing Ennis apart than either Erica or Stiles managed to be with Kali and Deucalion.

They leave the remains and wait in the shadows for the twins to come back.  Stiles had been right, the two had been attending fucking high school.  While Stiles was being ripped apart and put back together they’d been sitting in Coach’s class next to his friends.  He could smell Lydia and Danny on them.  The three freshly minted alphas gave both of the twins to Boyd. 

The last thread of their pack was tied, re-forged from thread to steel.  They would never be alone again.

 

***

Becoming all alphas affected their pack bonds very little.  They were pack.  Undisputable fact. However, they were also strong and independent in their own rights.  At the center stood Stiles, in an authoritative, steadying role he couldn’t feel less qualified for.  He was also downward spiraling from what he would forever secretly call the Alpha High with his arms soaked up to the elbows in dead alpha blood.  All that mattered to him in those moments was the safety of his pack, his mental stability was secondary.  If he was honest with himself, his mental stability had always been secondary.  He wasn’t going to complain because there he was fucking alive when everything in his new supernatural world said he should be dead.

Stiles led his pack outside into a disgustingly cheerful bright sunny day.  The bodies are left to rot.  They do end up taking Ennis’ truck and all the cash they could fish off the corpses.  Stiles knew the pack needed the money and the wheels, they couldn’t stay so close to town.  None of them had shifted for months and now that they were alphas… it would’ve been a blood bath.  The next full moon was scratching beneath his skin, they had the coming night and the day after to get as far away from Beacon Hills as possible.

Stiles took the first shift; the drive was quiet for the first fifty or so miles.  None of them talked about how no one came for them.  Months, Stiles discovered after flicking the radio on, and no one ever came.  Oh, Stiles knew people would have tried but none of them made it.  Not his dad, not Scott, not Derek.  Suffering together can create a sense of comradery, and now Stiles understood it could embitter you to all else.

Hours after leaving the Beacon County border Stiles stopped for gas, food, water, and whatever clean clothes a 24-hour fill-up station had to offer.  Gas station employees were of a different stock than regular people.  A group of teenagers covered in blood was no big deal as long as said teenagers didn’t steal anything or pull a gun.  They walk out with t-shirts with varying messages about their love for California and the store’s entire stock of beef jerky.  Stiles made sure everyone drank at least a couple of bottles of PowerAde, he didn’t know how dehydration affected werewolves but he did the best he could with his paltry first aid skills.  They only snarled and openly snapped at each other a couple of times, Stiles considered it a team win.  Passersby received grins with too many teeth and sometimes low animalistic growls that only got worse the nearer the full moon came.  Once upon a time Stiles had thought the whole brand new werewolf swagger thing was pure arrogance soaked in a power rush when the reality was much more complex.  Stiles’ whole center of balance changed, his body moved differently, he moved like he could strike out at any moment at any living thing and hell if he didn’t want to. The pack shared the same blood-on-fire feeling.  Stiles wanted to hunt and den down somewhere in equal measure.  No matter where they went he wasn’t satisfied, nowhere was far enough.

 Ending up in the Mojave Desert was almost an accident.  A strung-out Stiles had been heading in a general south east direction for a while.   He stayed on the highway until they spotted a road that seemed to lead away from any major cities and towns and into some touristy national park areas.  Another turn down a road Stiles wasn’t sure of.  He drove past the overlooks and picnic tables, past any civilization at all.  The desert wasn’t the layers of tan under a big open sky like he’d expected, too much Fallout after school, it was rather a wash of colors put to movement by shimmering heat so that the ground itself looked alive.

Mountain ridges interrupted the golden desert horizon like so many shallow teeth.  The sun was sinking behind them—the pack was out of time.  They left the truck on the side of the road and started running wherever their noses led them.   That first night under a fierce silver moon Stiles forgot his own name.  He knew nothing but what he was and that those with him were his pack.  The beta shift felt like a relief, releasing an ache Stiles had barely noticed under everything else.  Base instincts ran them all night and in the morning Stiles could feel the fresh misery through the pack bonds, for a short time they forgot all they’ve had to suffer, new and old wounds alike. 

Pain always comes back around. 

Stiles didn’t need to tell any of them that.

They decided to stay.  The truck was almost out of gas anyway and they had some supplies stocked up.  Stiles’ dad had tried to take him camping exactly once.  A little bit after his dad woke up from a whiskey-induced haze and realized his son suddenly knew how to cook, clean, administer his own meds, and get his own ass to school every day the Sheriff got his shit together and that somehow resulted in a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon.  Sheriff Noah Stilinski was born and bred in L.A. until he met the love of his life, Stiles Stilinski was a level 80 dark elf necromancer, events went about as well as could be expected.  Camping out as a werewolf in an arid, unforgiving landscape was not easy either, but it wasn’t exactly difficult.  Carving out a pseudo-territory near the mountains felt more natural than anything.  The pack created a place to live beneath an outcropping of rock that never received direct sunlight and provided a small steady stream of water through the cracks.

Weeks went by and Stiles’ hair grew out long enough to begin slightly curling at the ends.  They became leaner, stronger, and their clothes threadbare, a human would have died of exposure long ago.  Their supplies dwindled to nothing and no one could bring themselves to care. Going nonverbal for days on end was commonplace, when they did speak it was in cut-off to the point sentences.  Eventually the pack had to find a better water source and hunt every day.  Both required stalking animals.  Cora told them the raw meat would become more palpable the closer to the wolf they got, they would stop throwing up eventually. Small rabbits weren’t enough to sustain anyone and there was a general disdain for the taste of lizard once they got over eating raw meat as a whole.  Every time Stiles snatched one up from the ground and looked into its little lizard face Stiles’ mind provided helpful snapshots of the kanima.

Further they went into the mindset of the wolf the further they disconnected from humanity.  They weren’t feral wolves, feral meant a packless wolf beyond reason.  They just were.

They were also not the only supernatural creatures in the desert.  Things existed out there that passed around them like ships in the night, unconcerned with these relative new-comers.  Sometimes glittering eyes looked out from scraggly bushes and stared all night.  Dark vaguely human shapes darted from dune to dune before the full moon as if putting distance between them and the alphas.  The other things in the desert never come near, instead they were content to watch.  Some were afraid, Stiles could smell it, others he swore he could hear laughing at them in crow-like squawks.  No matter what he saw or heard Stiles was never afraid.

On a clear night when the black void of the sky and the endlessness of the land seemed to meld together Stiles discovered a huge ranch miles and miles from their territory.  Stiles directed a raid on it twice a week the night afterwards.  He and Boyd drug awkward handling cattle to their den while the girls masked their presence.  Ranchers thinking they had a predator problem would only be bad for them, the way they operated made it look like people were coming in to steal the cattle when the truth was between the two.

Bigger prey brought in coyotes.  The howl Stiles sent them in warning sounded more like thunder breaking across rare desert clouds.  The coyotes yip and bark back but came no closer.  He could smell their hunger on the wind.  Out of a pity he can’t place the source of Stiles left meaty bones for them about half a mile out from camp. 

Erica smiled at him when he walked back, barefoot and chilled from the night air, “I think I almost forgot.”

The rest frowned at her and Stiles asked in a raspy underused voice, “Forgot what?”

She shrugged, “What kindness looked like.”

That night they curled around each other under the stars.  In the morning Stiles spent hours trying to make a fire, persistence earned him smoke and then they started cooking their food.  Stiles talked more, nagging the others until they answered his questions with more than guttural sounds.  Words became easier around a fire, truths did too. 

Boyd talked about his sister.  He’d learned to braid hair just for her after his parents divorced and his mom never seemed to have the time.  She loved anything that lived in the sea and up to and including mermaids.  Boyd knew every word to Under the Sea.

Cora told them she didn’t remember much about her family, the night of the fire the only thing she was sure of was that someone pushed her out a window and told her to run—she was so young.  The pack who took her in raised her on the legends of the Hales.  Her whole life she’d been trying to live up to people she could scarcely even remember.

When Erica was diagnosed with epilepsy she’d already had six attacks before her parents took her to a doctor because they thought she was faking for attention.  She’d spend the following years trying her very best to not be noticed at all, high school made that impossible.

Stiles was alone with his mom when she died.  A last breath doesn’t sound any different than any other breath, you expect another to come after but it never does.  He didn’t quite believe she was gone even as his dad and nurses drug him away from her bedside, he was still waiting for that next breath.

Cora and Erica would openly bicker while Stiles sometimes added instigative comments and Boyd wisely kept out of anything that would lead to fangs dropping.  They all bickered to an extent, then they would get over it.  They would laugh too and if anyone needed to be alone with their own sorrow for a time no one was called out on it because they all understood.

They weren’t just pack any more.  They were family.

***

Stiles started to worry about the raids.  The ranchers were getting savvier and that meant going hungry for longer.  Half the time they slept during the day like lazy red-mouthed lions.  Nocturnal living suited them better, they avoided the dry heat and conserved energy to pick off cattle at night.  Armed men stationed around the ranches at night now made that impossible.  Stiles ordered a wide berth around them.  Humans with guns and stinking of animal blood made Stiles think of the Argents and, well, he really wasn’t down to kill anyone again so soon.  The knowledge that he could if he had to sat heavy in his stomach.  They would be fine without the cattle, they could hunt other things.

Except they really couldn’t.

A desert is by nature desolate and a werewolf is by nature hungry all the fucking time.  Even the coyotes had gone off leaving carrion birds to pick at whatever was left. 

The night after Stiles decided to himself he would let the other’s know they had to be moving on he caught a scent on the outskirts of their territory.  An alpha was there, one who smelled of expensive aftershave and charred wood left to the rain.  Stiles knew it without ever really smelling it before.  He howled, furious at an interloper and the implications of _that_ scent being an alpha, and shifted.  Stiles never realized how fast he’d gotten until right then, one moment he can only see a figure in the distance watching and the next he was face to face with Peter Hale.

The pack rushed to his back, as nice as the support was Stiles didn’t need it to shove his claws into Peter’s flesh and bare his teeth.

“It wasn’t Derek.”  Peter gasped out through fangs of his own.

Cora growled.  Peter’s eyes shot to her then widened before his shock was covered up with his usual blank, smarmy, calm.

Stiles was gripped by a fear that was more human than wolf for the first time in a while.  Fear for Derek.  He’d recognized they’d been slipping further into the wolf and naively thought talking around a campfire would fix everything.  He’d been wrong of course.  Because Stiles was still not quite thinking straight, he didn’t care Peter killed some random alpha only that he hadn’t killed someone that was…his. 

Stiles dropped Peter to the ground, “Leave.”

Peter laughed, dusting off clothes that had no business in the Mojave, “The others think your dead, or kidnapped by another group of werewolves, because doesn’t that just sound reasonable?”

Boyd stepped forward and squared his shoulders, “Stiles?”

Stiles shook his head.  He had to admit he was a little curious, sometimes he couldn’t help it.  Last time he saw Peter Hale Stiles helped set him on fire again, which was a really shitty way to go considering the dude’s unpleasant history with the whole burning alive thing.  You don’t fuck with Stiles’ people though, he’d do it again but not if Peter avoided putting him in a situation that would make it necessary.

“I was right about you.”  Peter looked him up and down, “You are a magnificent wolf.  I have a better nose than Derek.  Obviously better than Scott’s.  Though they can’t really be blamed, that place was something of a gore factory.  The only reason we found it was because the stench of death flooded that whole street. I knew you walked out of that bank, well, a version of you did.  Impressive work.  All four of you.  Very impressive.”

Stiles cocked his head and smirked, “Thanks.  Nice to have a fan.  Now leave.”

“Which one of them bit you?”  Peter asked ignoring Stiles’ demand.

Taken off guard by Peter’s bluntness Stiles actually answered him, “Deucalion.  Jealous?”

“Yes.”

“Ugh,” Erica sniffed, “gross.”

Peter merely smiled and without another word turned on his heel and left.  Stiles stared at him until he could no longer see him.  With Peter came the reality of the outside world crashing in.  They had no idea how long they’d been out there, thoughts of anyone beyond the pack hadn’t really crossed his mind.  God, his dad must’ve been worried sick.  Peter wouldn’t have given away where they were to anyone unless Stiles asked, or whenever Peter got what he wanted—which Stiles always thought was to be an alpha.  Peter was an alpha now and yet he came to look for them.

 There was another thing Peter made no secret he’d wanted from the beginning, the whole reason he turned Scott.

Peter returned the next night.  And the night after that and the night after that.  Each time he brought bags of food and clean water to lay at the edge of the territory ignoring the warning growls from the young alpha pack.  Stiles accepted the food, eventually.  His pack was hungry and he wasn’t going to let his own feelings keep them from eating. 

Reacquainting themselves with human food was an experience.  Again they got sick at first but Stiles was almost determined to find his humanity at the bottom of a bag of Cheetos.  He accidentally said that out loud and Boyd barked out a laugh that surprised everyone.

The pack shifted again, ever so subtly, unconsciously Stiles thought, making room.  Peter brings clothes next, all of which fit pretty well.  Stiles, whose old jeans were now a rust color from dust and blood, acknowledged the new clothes felt nice.

It was Cora who pointed out, “He’s domesticating us.”

“We’re not animals.”  Stiles replied with a roll of his eyes.

Cora looked at him pointedly, “No.  But we are predators.”

Technically so were humans, how successful a predator you were depended entirely on where you landed on the food chain.  Stiles carded his fingers through his hair and sighed, “Ask me what you really want to ask me, Cora.”

She glared, “Is he with us?”

Stiles had thought about it since Peter showed up.  Since he started help provide for them without asking for anything in return, only he was asking.  Asking to be pack without saying the words.  They needed an adult.  Any adult other than Peter would have been preferable, in like, any situation at all, but he’s what they got.  He had money, transportation, and Stiles’ wolf was becoming more accepting of him.

“That’s up to you,” Stiles was the Alpha of Alphas, whatever the hell that meant anymore, but he wasn’t going to force any of his choices on them, “I told you what happened.  From my running for my life perspective.  He’s your uncle and you’re my pack.  It’s your choice.”

Cora’s taken aback face looked exactly like Derek’s and Stiles had to look anywhere else for a moment.  He settled on Boyd trying to make something out of the mess of Erica’s sun bleached hair.

“You think we need him though.”

“No.  But I won’t lie, he’d be an asset.  Doesn’t mean I have to like him.  I don’t like a helluva whole lot of people anyway, but him in particular.”

Cora nodded curtly then ran off deeper into the mountains.  The two don’t speak about Peter again until the man shows up again.  She casted a long look at Stiles and gave him a jerky little nod in assent.

Peter had just finished dragging a cooler to the usual drop off spot when Stiles prowled up to him slow and considering.  Peter froze.  Confrontation had always been a part of Stiles’ sterling personality; the wolf made it his first response rather than his second.  He got right in Peter’s face—his eyes burning coals in a clear challenge.  Peter’s eyes flashed right back.  Alphas weren’t the submitting types, obviously, Peter stayed rigid for a long time before baring his throat for Stiles to clamp his jaws around.  Stiles kept a hand at Peter’s nape and avoided breaking the skin with this teeth but if Peter had struggled against him it wouldn’t have been helped.  Peter didn’t struggle, he sighed shakily and went loose.  A pack bond between them flared to life, Stiles was a little winded by it.  His bonds to the others had been a natural progression; he never had to make them submit.

Through the bond Stiles could tell Peter had been edging a very steep cliff.  An alpha alone was the same as a beta alone, omega. He could have bit anyone and yet he didn’t.  All on the off chance Stiles would bring him into what could be the strongest pack out there.  Peter wanted power but the point of it was to never be put in a position of helplessness again.  Stiles understood the sentiment.

Stiles practically dragged a shell-shocked Peter to their den and pushed him into a sitting position by the fire.  Erica came over first to scent-mark him; she was always the most brazen of them and then followed Boyd who trusted Erica’s judgement even when he maybe shouldn’t.  Stiles would have thought Peter would resent Erica and Boyd.  It was clear he didn’t.  Erica and Boyd were good wolves.  They survived, there was nothing wrong with wanting to live.  Peter would later say it was an alpha’s job to take care of the betas not the other way around.  He was abandoned once, left behind by Laura alone and healing too slowly.  No, Peter would never hold a grudge for leaving Derek when in his eyes it was Derek who failed them.

Cora kept to the far side of the den, her eyes haven’t stopped glowing.

Stiles plopped down across from Peter, the older wolf evaluated him again, “In my right mind, I would have never given you the bite without consent.”  Peter said it like he’d been thinking about it for a long time.  Through the bond Stiles knew he was telling the truth.

Stiles scoffed, “How magnanimous of you.”

“It really was.”  Peter furrowed his brow at Erica who kept sniffing his jacket and trying to goad Boyd into a game of guess that cologne, he snarled at them but the two are unfazed.

Peter huffed irritably and turned his attention back to Stiles, “Can I be honest?”

“Will it make me want to punch you in the face?”

“Maybe.”

“Awesome, shoot.”

“I’m grateful you were turned anyway.  Certainly the rest of your little band is.  They’d probably be all dead by now if you hadn’t been taken too.  But they had you.  You were meant to be a werewolf, Stiles.  Anyone could have seen it.”

Stiles’ laugh was a bitter little chuckle that had the pack pausing, “Not anyone.  You know, my world went from complicated to divided into Mine and Not Mine overnight.  I knew the day we escaped we couldn’t be near anyone for too long because we’d see them all as threats and I wouldn’t be able to control myself much less a whole pack of alphas.  I thought about stopping by my house before we drove off so I could turn my dad and at the time I didn’t see anything wrong with that.  Maybe I’ve got my shit together a little better now but I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.  Don’t assume anything about anyone, Peter.  Don’t try to manipulate me or them.  You try and I’ll leave your bones for the crows.  No one would look for you because no one would care.”  Stiles took a steadying breath, “We could care, Peter, for you.  If you let us.  You’ll have pack again, you have it right now.  Don’t fuck it up.”

Stiles insisted Peter stay all night with them.  Over the flames he asked what kind of car Peter drove and could it fit four more growing werewolves.

“Oh, I think something can be arranged.”

Before falling asleep they watched Boyd carve a large menacing insignia into the rock wall with his claws.  The Alpha Triskelion, it was their symbol now.

They earned it.

***

Stiles missed his Jeep.

Peter’s Escalade was nice and all, like really nice holy shit, but Stiles wasn’t a big roadtrip guy to begin with and he preferred the familiarity of the Jeep if he had to be stuck somewhere for hours.  As a kid he was always the one asking if they were there yet, as an adult that hadn’t much changed.  Impatience and ADHD weren’t great traits for roadtripping, he was always torn between wanting to stop at every interesting looking giant ball of twine on the side of the road or pushing through as fast as possible to get to where they’re going.  Problem was Stiles had no idea where they were going.  They left their den in the desert behind but hadn’t picked another destination.  So they drove, not quite aimlessly.  Peter insisted on buying his new pack clothes and whatever else they needed and stopped at a bustling mall in Arizona once they were clean enough to take out into public.

Stiles narrowed his eyes at Peter while Erica, Cora, and Boyd, surged ahead from store to store, “Are you trying to buy our affections?”

The older wolf rolled his shoulders for all appearances bored out of his mind, “Is it working?”

“Hell yes!”  Erica shouted which appeased some of the tension in Peter.

They stopped at a decent motel afterwards, shitty enough to not ask questions, nice enough to not bother a werewolf’s nose.  Stiles claimed a hot shower first.  It felt like a rebirth, he moaned openly under the spray of clean water.  He could hear the pack laughing at him and gave zero fucks honestly.  He put a little more When Harry Met Sally into his moan and the chuckling abruptly stopped.  After a pause he heard Cora whisper vaguely impressed, “Jesus, Stiles.”

And that was a win if he’d ever heard one. 

The motel beds don’t get used.  They all wake up wrapped around each other on the blanket-covered floor after falling asleep watching reruns of I Love Lucy.  Cora slept soundly in Peter’s arms even while everyone else woke, her face tucked under his chin.  Peter’s eyes were wide open, afraid, and acutely aware he had something precious in his arms.  After waking up like that a dam broke between them.  Erica practically claimed Peter as her own and the two become the bane of Stiles’ existence, Boyd was a bit warier because Stiles himself was still wary, Cora continued to not speak to Peter much although she soon had no problem taking up space beside him as casually as she could.  Peter hid his smile every time.

Their roadtrip began to feel more like actually living than running away.  There was no denying they have been running away either.  Stiles wondered if they could be charged with murder or if the Beacon Hills pack cleaned up the evidence.  It was an almost a funny thought while he shared a super-sized blue raspberry slushie with Boyd and waited for Erica and Peter to come out of the gas station, the last they’d need to hit in Arizona.

A brain freeze hit him just as Peter and Erica blew through the gas station doors wearing matching red shutter shades and neon colored t-shirts that declared in big block letters: Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda.  The only thing they were missing was the M.I.A. song playing in the distance.  Their wolfish grins had the few other patrons scattering.  Some moved a little too much like prey and Stiles tracked them with his eyes until they disappeared into their cars.  Most people were instinctively put off by them, especially when they approach a place together.  They didn’t dress like some sort of biker gang but people still had enough sense in their lizard brains to recognize predators when they saw them.

There had been a few odd out of the way diners here and there whose employees didn’t bat an eye at them—odd places that held a strange aura all their own with the best food Stiles had ever had.  Places that made Stiles doubt reality because they shouldn’t exist outside 50’s movies and he started believing maybe the fae were a thing.  He always forced Peter to leave a big tip at those places. 

Just in case.

***

When they hit New Mexico Cora shoved a campy little pamphlet about Route 66 through New Mexico at Stiles.  He took the hint and made it all the way to the dusty town of Santa Rosa and the old church where Billy the Kid supposedly died.  Cora had a Western Thing.  As in cowboys and outlaws.  Stiles tried hard not to find it adorable mostly because she’d break his arm if she found out.  Boyd was interested in the history too and stayed on her heels wherever she explored, Peter and Erica were bored out of their skulls and found a local swimming hole that was apparently sort of famous.  It was deep blue and bottomless and looked like a portal to another dimension. 

Erica asserted the rest of the afternoon be spent swimming and after their time in the actual desert everyone easily agreed.  Stiles remained dubious and only got into the interdimensional water hole was because Boyd tackled him from behind out of nowhere.   Stiles built a mental list about Vernon Boyd, a detailed list on the reasons why you should never trust that serenely handsome face of his.  His quiet and calm nature hid an asshole.

Stiles pulled himself out graceful as a walrus and tried to look grumpy, he failed pretty spectacularly.  Erica cooed at him from the water, her long blonde hair made her appear like a siren up until Cora instigates a splash fight.  Peter spent most of his time tanning on the higher rocks around the swimming less like a siren, Stiles thought, more like a turtle on the road during summertime—warming up that cold blood of his. He heard a cameras snapping on phones and Stiles jerked his head over to a gaggle of older women, Peter was an attractive turtle it seemed.   Stiles got some flustered giggles himself and a few tentative looks from a couple of men which Stiles realized he didn’t mind at all, add that on the pile of things he had to get used to.

“Face it, Batman,” Erica said back in their motel room for the night, she was carrying a hair trimmer in one hand a bag of dollar store nail polish in the other, “You’re hot shit.  Promise me you’ll use your powers for evil?”

“Obviously.”  Stiles chuckled.

She tossed the polishes to Erica then settled in front of the big mirror between the bathroom and the tiny open closet and started to look critically at her head, “You have ‘Stiles’ going for you too, its odd, mysterious.  Unlike some people, _Vernon_.”

Stiles acted affronted on Boyd’s behalf, “Vernon?  What’s wrong with Vernon?  I like Vernon.  Like Mount Vernon.  Big, strong, photogenic.”

Cora snorted from the bed where she was going through Erica’s nail polishes holding colors up to Peter for his nod or dissent, “You really gonna let him butter you up like that, Boyd?”

“Yes.”  Boyd said, he was laid right beside her trying to nap.

They jump at the sound of Erica’s trimmer.  She hovered over her head like she was unsure where to start.

“Erica?”  Peter asked concerned.

“I just.”  She stared at her reflection, “Want something new.  I don’t feel like me yet…I haven’t felt like me in a long time.  I want to do this but I don’t know what people will think when they look at me, I’m pissed that’s still something I worry about.”

“Wolves do not weep over the opinions of sheep, my dear.”  Peter said.  The dude meant well but Stiles was starting to get sometimes Peter couldn’t help but to sound like a super villain.

Stiles nodded, “Want some help?”  He’d been buzzing his own hair since his mom died.  His hair now was the longest it’s ever been but he had no urge to cut it and he’d be lying if he said the way Erica liked to run her fingers through it wasn’t soothing.

Peter had some styling suggestions and between the three of them Erica ends up with a sort-of pixie cut that’s still long enough at the top for her use product in her hair.  The process of trimming and evening her hair took over an hour but her smile at the end was totally worth it.  The rest of the night Erica and Cora spend painting everyone’s nails.  Boyd sleeps through the application of bright orange polish on his nails, Cora shrugged, “Don’t worry it’s his favorite color.”

Someone who suspiciously sounded like Boyd suggested in the middle of the night, “You know, a real beach would be nice.”

In the harsh light of day four sets of eyes pin Stiles down and that’s how he decided they were going to Mexico.

But first, Roswell.  Looking at Area 51 through a pair of binoculars in the wee hours before dawn was on his bucket list.

They totally saw a UFO.

“That’s a satellite, Stiles.”  Cora whispered not taking her eyes away from her own binoculars as they laid on top of Peter’s car and the rest of the pack slept inside.

It was a UFO.  Definitely.

***

The story at the border was a simple one: they were college students and Peter was their assistant professor, they were going to an archaeological site in association with the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  Peter took the driver’s seat and everything to pull off the lie, he had also put together some paperwork and passports through “contacts” for the whole pack long before Stiles had even accepted him into said pack.  Presumptuous bastard. 

The border officer eyes their painted nails with a due amount of suspicion.  Peter was probably one of the most suspicious looking people in the world and a car full of teenagers trying to Bambi-eye the border rent-a-cop wasn’t helping his case anyway.  The officer frowns but sends them on through.

Peter had contacts in Mexico too and vaguely mentions he knows a safe place they could go. He drove the long way past Cancun via winding roads and through a thick mangrove forest that made Stiles nervous purely because it was a perfect ambush position to the fishing village of Puerto Morelos.  They’re met there by a short Mexican man that was older than all of them combined though his steps were spritely, he greeted Peter with a big startling hug and rapid-fire Spanish.  Peter was fluent, so was Cora obviously and Erica less obviously.  No one bothered to translate the conversation for him. Cora only took pity on Boyd and Stiles when it came to ordering food, everywhere else they were left to suffer.  Boyd and Stiles don’t complain much about it, rather they use Peter’s phone and load it down with language learning apps the second they have free time.

The old man, Devante, set them up with a sparsely furnished little wood plank house by a private cove right on the beach.  The salty air was thin and cleansing and the sand was so much more forgiving than the Mojave’s.  The pack felt a little more settled in their bones.  Peter brought Devante inside to Stiles once the pack checked the house out for a more formal talk around their kitchen table. Devante’s proposition was simple:  in exchange for the town’s protection Stiles and his pack would protect the town.  The locals, before developmental pressure came in from the north and tourists with it, were not historically strangers to the supernatural and threats tended to pop up now and again.  Stiles agreed. 

After Devante left them with three casserole dishes of his wife’s cooking, Stiles turned to Peter to confirm something he figured out for himself.

“What did you do before?”  Stiles asked.

“Before?”

“The fire, Peter, you know what I meant.”

Cora sidled up next to Stiles, curious of the answer herself.

Peter stared unblinking, “I was a lawyer.  And when I wasn’t…I was Talia’s enforcer.  I took care of problems the pack faced when negotiations weren’t an option.  Talia did always love her little peace talks, even she knew when there was no other way.”

“So you know how to fight.”  Stiles didn’t phrase his words as a question.

“Yes, Stiles, I know how to fight.”

Stiles gave a short jerky nod, and then said with a small amount of unwavering if mostly unintentional command in his voice, “Teach us.”

Erica and Boyd filtered into the kitchen drawn in by the conversation and the smell of food.  Stiles threw plastic forks at their heads before the heathens could dig in with their claws then focused back on Peter.

“Teach us to fight, Peter.  Like alphas fight.  You’re not our enforcer,” Stiles cringed at the word, they were a pack not the freaking mafia, “I won’t stand only one of his getting blood on their hands.  If something needs killing we do it together.  Teach us to fight.”

Peter’s eyes burned red, he nodded.

***

According to Boyd and Erica, Peter’s methods were lightyears away from Derek’s who had apparently used a learn by get the shit beat out of you technique that made Peter scoff, “Fight smarter not harder.  Brute force is the tool of the weak.  Sooner or later you will encounter someone stronger than you, you’re all already aware of that fun little fact.”

“Sure thing, Yoda.”  Stiles snarked.

They did end up accidentally hurting one another once in a while during training, that couldn’t be helped.  They were alphas and they were going to step on each other’s toes.  Stiles could usually growl them down when the sparring sessions got too heated which mostly happened because of Cora.  Erica might have been the most in-your-face brazen but Cora was hands down the most vicious.  Boyd on the other hand excelled at ambush tactics, his size didn’t hinder him in the slightest.  One second there was nothing there behind him the next Boyd had Stiles tackled face-first into shallow waves.  Stiles had the most physical power but hardly ever used it instead, to Peter utter delight, he liked to fight dirty.

When a pair of half-shifted feral blood thirsty werewolves clamored at Puerto Morelos’ border a couple of months later the ferals hadn’t stood a chance.  Nor did the wendigo a few weeks after or the family of literal cannibals that thought the town wouldn’t miss a few fishermen.

***

“I’m going to call my dad today.”  Stiles announced to the room.  They had been working on a real living room other than just a TV and a library in their little house and everyone was busy in the throes of moving actual furniture, they stopped to stare at him.  Except for Peter, who was more concerned with flipping through a fashion magazine he got shipped from New York every month.

Boyd thinned his lips, “Are you sure you’re ready?”

“I,” Stiles took a shuddering breath, “I miss him.  And I mean, we’re all still missing right?  Shouldn’t we fix that?”

“Presumed dead by now, surely.”  Peter cheerfully added without looking up.

Instead of just telling Peter to shut up Stiles had gotten into the habit of baring his fangs at the other wolf.

“That’s not Boyd meant,” Cora said.

“I’m in control.”  Stiles wasn’t lying.  He meant it.  He wasn’t going to be trying to turn his father into a wolf and make him join the band.  That he ever thought it made him sick.

“Do whatever you need to, Batman.  You know we got your back.”  Erica pressed a short kiss to his temple and brushed passed him to finish carrying in a sofa by herself.

Stiles did not call his dad that day; his anxiety ratcheted up so bad the others got contact anxious and started acting out.  He doesn’t garner the courage to even look at a phone for another week.  The pack conspired against him, real mutiny type shit, by locking him in the renovated bathrooms—bathrooms Stiles worked on himself and would loath to break anything in, with a shiny new smartphone already with a protective Red Hood case on it and one number programmed in.  Of fucking course Peter had his father’s number, Peter probably had the number to anyone Stile’s had ever talked to, creeperwolf. 

Boyd and Erica still had family too.  Erica harbored a steadfast love for her mom as weighty as the disappointment within her toward the woman.  And Boyd, well, Boyd blamed himself for his sister’s death—one guess where he got the impression from.  They thought differently of the Sheriff, Stiles was proud his dad left that impression on people.  A good man.

Stiles breathed in.

Out.

In.

Out.

He hit dial.

Next time Stiles saw his father he was bearded, wrapped in flannel and wearing terrible dad board shorts. 

Stiles had never cried happy tears before.

***

The addition of Noah Stilinski to the alpha pack household did not go over smoothly.  He and Peter did not get along.  Stiles was being nice about it.  Peter and his dad hated each other in that seething over breakfast putting Peter’s dry clean only shirts in the washing machine kind of way.

So maybe the good Sheriff blamed Peter for everything that happened to Stiles and he was right, but wrong too.  Really, if they played that game Stiles would say Kate and Gerard Argent really got the bullshit ball rolling.  Not that Kate’s name was ever uttered in front of Peter—an unspoken house rule just as no one mention Derek Hale either unless Stiles himself brought him up.  And Stiles hated that they treated his name the same as Kate’s, like a curse, but the pack did it out of love.  Shitty thing about being a werewolf number 42 was the knowing how everyone else felt bit all the freaking time, chemosignals Peter and Cora clarified, the bonds, and heartbeats built a pretty clear picture.  They could all tell Noah’s distaste for Peter ran bone-deep.

“I need some space.”  Peter ground out one afternoon after five minutes in the same room as Stiles’ father, eyes aglow, he’d never lay a claw on the Sheriff.  He was pack too in that oddly disconnected way only a human can be, the way Stiles was for Scott.  Stiles doesn’t miss being human, who would miss being helpless?  His father wasn’t him though, never helpless, in need of some assistance sometimes sure but he was never what Stiles was.

Worriedly Stiles watched Peter stomp out onto the beach and stop where the land met the glittering blue-green of the ocean.  The older wolf still had his fancy ass shoes on.  His dad went the opposite direction saying something about walking into town.

“Not a bad idea.”  Boyd points out using as little words to convey his meaning as possible.  Knowing exactly what Boyd meant Stiles had to agree, yeah, they needed more space.

It wasn’t just a Peter and his dad problem it was a pack problem.  They had all latched onto each other like blind puppies fresh out of the womb after they became alphas.  Living out of each other’s pockets, afraid to let go for a second.  This whole time they were still afraid. 

In the evening Stiles and Boyd sketched out plans for adding on a couple of rooms to the house and extending the porch.  They pushed the plans at Peter and the Sheriff with orders of get to it.  Well, Stiles ordered Peter, he bribed his father with fresh fish tacos.  His dad was actually a pretty good carpenter when he had the time for it.  Peter was always more of the throw money at it until the job got done type.  The two complained but they saw the merit in the plans.  Stiles made sure to listen in on their conversations regularly because, really, he was always going to be a noisy asshole but mostly he was good at telling when Peter was getting truly geared up and needed to cool off.  Cora bought a cheap water pistol just for that purpose.  Sometimes Peter stood there blank as a statue, other times he roared and chased Cora around the house.

On the windiest day Stiles had ever seen the pack sans Peter sat outside to watch a storm gather miles away across the water while his dad talked to a curious Erica about surfing and how he would like to take it up again.  His story lead into moving to Beacon Hills and giving up the past time to cop full time.  Which lead to talk of Beacon Hills and everything that happened with the kanima.  Jackson was saved by the power of true love because why not.  His dad lost his job, didn’t try to get it back.  Scott and Derek gave the former Sheriff the down-low on all things supernatural out of a sense of responsibility or guilt, it had been hard to tell which.

“They thought I was going to shoot them.”  Noah’s smile was a shadow of Stiles’ ‘this thing is mean but I kinda get a kick out of it’ smile.  “I wasn’t in a good place after you went missing, kid.  I was…cruel to Melissa, she was understanding but every damn time I looked at her I thought how could she possibly understand?  Her son was right there next to her, mine was gone.  I ran my mouth too much.”  Stiles could relate.

Peter appeared and dropped a pile of two by fours at Noah’s feet for him to measure and said off-handedly, “Loss makes us cruel, Sheriff.”

Stiles flinched, he remembered when his mom died and he’d see another family out living their lives…his thoughts had not been kind.  You can’t help but think, what made them so special, what made some stranger’s mom so great that she could live while his own had to die?  Why couldn’t have it been them?  Those thoughts weren’t exclusive to a child. Loss made everyone cruel. 

Stiles’ dad regards Peter for long loaded seconds, gauging him, maybe finding something he wouldn’t let himself see before, “Its Noah.”

Peter looked unaffected, “Noah, then.”

The storm missed them.  The rooms get built.  Peter doesn’t get shot, and Stiles marked it up as progress.

***

“Chupacabras,” Stiles shook his head, “People give them such a bad rep.  Steal a goat here, steal a goat there, not a big deal.  Chill dudes really.  I mean mermaids eat people whole and they get Disney movies.”

Noah ran his hands down his face and breathed in the strong smell of coffee from his cup he wasn’t fully prepared for this conversation this early in the morning, he wasn’t fully prepared for his son to be a werewolf either so he was gonna have to suck it up because he had asked about what else was out there after all, “Mermaids are real?”

“I’m just saying, daddio, don’t go swimming at the north wharf by Marisol’s cantina at night.”

“Stiles, you are going to give me a straight answer right now.”

“Straight?  I don’t know the meaning of the word.”  Stiles joked too comfortably before realizing with horror, what he just implied to his father.  The rest of the pack weren’t out of bed yet but Stiles could hear them laughing into their pillows sounding like tiny traitorous hyenas.

Noah huffed, “Of course you don’t.  Now, mermaids.”

Stiles flailed, “Wait, what?  What?  What is that supposed to mean, you said I wasn’t gay!”

Noah blinked and narrowed his eyes giving Stiles a nonplussed look, “Because you’re bisexual.”

“Yeah.”  Stiles croaked.  The hyenas laughed louder.

“So, mermaids…”

***

They got so comfortable in their lives they forgot.  Stiles protected the town and the town protected his pack, it’s how it should be between wolves and their territories but they forgot to grow comfortable is to grow complacent. 

They don’t know how the Calaveras learn of them.

The people who knew they were wolves were good people and the threats they faced didn’t have survivors to scurry off and tell their friends about the alpha pack in Puerto Morelos, the how would come to matter much later for hunters were in the town stinking of wolfsbane and gunmetal.  Stiles asked Peter to take his father somewhere safe, for Peter’s protection just as much as his dad’s.  The code was bullshit, Stiles knew, but there was no reason to justify them shooting first.  Peter Hale was infamous, any hunter would have a hard-on for his pelt.

Scott would try to talk to them, ever the unshakable optimist.  Derek would try to look strong without doing anything at all if he wasn’t attacked first.  Peter wanted to wipe them all out in one fell swoop.

Stiles…he weighed his options.  He needed more information, proper recon.  Boyd was the best at stealth.  Stiles didn’t like sending him out alone however the more variables Stiles put on the field the riskier it got for everyone, plus anyone else would have just slowed Boyd down.

“Stiles,” Boyd said very seriously putting both his hands on Stiles’ shoulders, “Stop being so pissy, man, I’ll be fine.”

“This is not my pissy face it’s my concerned face.”

Boyd leaned in close, “No, it’s definitely your pissy face.”

“Well, your face is fuckin’ rude.”

Boyd slid his palm on the back of Stiles’ neck subtly scenting him, Stiles huffed dramatically but copied the motion tugging Boyd in close for a few seconds before releasing him.  Erica paced the house the second Boyd left.  Cora glared holes in the walls. 

Stiles stayed in constant text contact with his dad and Peter.  Peter was still on the kill train, his enthusiasm was only blunted by the cold hard stare of a former man of the law, however he agreed gathering more information was the smart thing to do and that Boyd was the best man for the job.  The less visual confirmation the hunters got about them the better.  Killing the hunters was still even better though, the sentiment is reiterated throughout the pack.  They can’t help but be angry, they carved out a safe place in the world and it was invaded. 

At the break of dawn Boyd returned with a furrowed brow and a name on his lips, “La Loba.”

Minutes later Peter called, voice strained, “Derek’s been taken.”  A question hung at the end: what are you going to do about it?  Please do something about it. 

Cora’s breath caught in her throat.  Boyd and Erica looked steady enough, their hearts told a different story.

Stiles grinned then shrugged, “I already have two Hales, let’s complete the set.”

 

 

End of Part One


	2. I Will Never Die

 

**Children of the Wild Ones**

  
**Part Two: I Will Never Die**

  
“In the dead of night  
I’m gonna loose these chains  
I’m gonna run and run and run and run and run  
I’m gonna run and run and run and run  
I’m coming for you again.”

 

By the time anyone noticed the ever growing miasma of rancid scents that ran the distance between fermenting potatoes to spoiled eggs the missing posters had been up for weeks. Erica’s had been up just a little longer than the others, if it had been up to Derek the other two would have been up just as fast. He noticed before anyone else did, he noticed a lot more than anyone credited him for and maybe if he checked up on all of them once in a while he would never admit out loud. The night they saved Jackson was the one night he didn’t make sure they all got home. Erica and Boyd made their intentions clear and Stiles…wasn’t his anyway, so why did it matter? Derek was hurt and used and wanted to go home to a home that hadn’t existed in years.

  
It had mattered.

  
Peter was the one to sniff them out.

  
The police had a hard job of picking out the remains. They did manage to identify all the known members of the Alpha pack, recognizable despite the way their skin was pulled back from the teeth and around the eyes giving them all the look of grinning skeletons dipped in wax. Even in death, Derek thought they looked mocking. They may have been dead, but in a way they had still won.

  
Derek’s pack was gone.

  
Consumed by helpless rage he teared apart a good portion of his old blackened house with his bare hands, not stopping for breath until his fingertips are shredded and bloody.

  
***

  
Hope burned bright and brief after the teenagers went missing. Derek could understand that, this was Beacon Hills after all, shit happened and then it turned out all right. For most. He knew that wasn’t going to be the case when Gerard Argent was reported dead.

  
A well of nothingness opened in him when he read the news on his phone. He wants to be vindicated, wants to spit on the man’s grave and tell the tombstone he hopes he sees his daughter in hell. Rather than victorious he’s just so tired. So fucking tired. Derek can’t bring himself to care when he’s left with one beta, a stubborn omega, and buckets of blood so mixed together the crime lab was having trouble separating it all. According to Scott’s connections with the Sherriff the word was the blood must have been corrupted somehow, odd indications of canine DNA, he’d always wondered about that.

  
His Dad had known more about the science side of lycanthropy. His Mom used to make endless jokes about Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park—the rock and roll scientist in a leather jacket, that was his Dad. The joke was overused and old but his father would laugh about her needling him every time.

  
Derek stopped thinking of his parents and saves the page that mentions Gerard Argent’s death.

  
***

  
Jackson wasn’t exactly difficult to train. When he’s not searching he’s giving the little asshole the best crash course he can before Jackson departs for London. He readily admits he’s running away from Beacon Hills, Derek can hardly blame him. Peter can, but Derek knows any ire he has for the kid is just bleed-over. In the haze of loss, training, and feeling useless he can feel his Uncle’s gaze constantly at the back of his head. He snaps and sneers at Jackson more than he means to because of it.

  
For once Scott showing up constantly makes things easier. If Scott appeared Peters was nowhere to be seen. Scott always smelled like guilt and anxiety, and the Argent girl, always thought Derek should know more than he does. Sometimes they yell at each other, still he’s easier to handle, preferable even, to Peter. Eventually Scott’s visits become rarer and Jackson leaves for London.

  
The town seems to make peace with mysteriously losing more teenagers.  
Derek doesn’t.

  
***

  
Derek watches the Sheriff fall apart from afar. Sometimes from up close too when he drops by Stiles’ bedroom to catch a fresh scent so he can walk around the bank again. Jack Daniel’s permeates the house yet the Sheriff was hardly home. The other man didn’t even know about Derek but it felt like they were the only two left that refused to give up.

  
Even Peter goes. Of course not without parting words that cut right through him, “What’s a few more dead wolves in the Hale pack? Like mother like son I suppose.”

  
Peter didn’t need claws, he could slaughter anything with only his voice. A long time ago Derek used to envy Peter’s way with words, he hadn’t understood words could be weapons. Words could kill them all. Derek’s words did kill them all.

  
If it weren’t for Isaac Derek would be completely alone. His remaining beta spends a lot of time with Scott. Derek very unsubtly encourages that, he has no idea if Isaac is in danger, they have no idea what happened to the others. Another even stronger pack is Scott’s prevailing theory. Which seems unlikely, but so did a lizard person so fuck all could be happening and as time has proven it was dangerous to throw your lot in with Derek.

  
He pushes. More surprising than anything Isaac pushes back. The kid refuses to stop coming by, doesn’t flinch when Derek yells. The reason why is never something Derek forgets, but, it was hard—to not resort to being cruel. It must be harder still for Isaac, newly orphaned, abused, who still looked at Derek like some kind of savior. He deserved better.

  
Sheer luck was the only reason Isaac wasn’t there pestering Derek about buying real food when the hunters came.

  
***

  
Derek only remembered the smoke, maybe that’s why he’d never developed a fear of fire. It was the smoke he had seen, rising into the sky like an insidious storm cloud. He’d not seen the flames only the aftermath of ashes, the smell. The wind carried charred bodies and smoldering wood for miles and miles.

  
He had heard them at the door, covering all exits, but it was the smoke bombs that made him panic and stutter for a few precious seconds. Plenty of time for the assholes to get shots off. Plenty of time for Derek to question his tenuous grip on sanity.

  
Kate Argent. Her teeth gleamed in a Cheshire cat grin, so fucking pleased with herself. He was going to die here, he was certain. He’d lived long enough to feel what having a real pack again was like, to care about people again, only to have it all end in blood. Being a survivor was overrated, he’s so fucking tired. Those words echo inside him unending. Kate sauntered close, roared in his face as his blood stained through his shirt.

  
She used to tell him to call her Katie.

  
Then she’d laughed and called him a monster.

  
It looked like he wasn’t the only monster anymore.

  
***

  
The strangest thing about being incased in an ancient tomb beneath a Mexican church was Derek could…feel what was happening to him. The beetles scuttling by his ears sound as loud as a moving train. Kate’s hands lingering at his neck while she adjusted him in the tomb with supernatural strength, finishing her pushing and pulling with a brush of lips to his forehead, are cold cold cold. If his body could respond to his mind his stomach would have forced bile up his throat.

  
“See you soon, lover.” She whispers in his ear.

  
Soon is relative.

  
So is the amount of time it takes for Derek to slip into an aconite-tinted partial coma.

  
***

  
Derek dreams. Or maybe he remembers, it’s impossible to make out which is which.  
Derek and Cora are sitting around Peter, Laura is hovering in the kitchen doorway too cool to hear stories from their Uncle but nonetheless interested. Peter is weaving connections between mythological creatures from all over the world, some creatures that sound too fantastic for even werewolves to believe. Peter shows them pictures of kitsune, fae, nagual, all in a colorful procession of flipping pages. The old tome snaps shut suddenly Peter and Cora are gone. Laura is staring at him.

  
More alarming than it should be, he thinks. Dreaming or not he knows logically he she’s dead. Ripped apart and set to ground without a proper burial. She was half buried in leaves when he found her, pale as the moon, vacant eyes. Gone. Derek hadn’t howled like a wolf, he’d cried like a human, screamed like a human.

  
Laura shakes her head to a question he didn’t ask, “Wake up, Der, try again.”

  
“I can’t.” Derek doesn’t recognize his own voice. He sounds disgustingly young even to his own ears.

  
She rolls her eyes, she looks so real, “Don’t be so fucking dramatic, little brother. You’re a Hale, you can. You will.”

  
“Laura—”

  
Her eyes bleed red, “Wake. Up.”

  
The order of his Alpha roars electric through his veins.

  
“Wake up!”

  
And that’s…not Laura’s voice.

  
Derek’s consciousness heaves to the surface, air catches in his throat as he chokes on dust. It feels like someone has poured concrete over his eyes nevertheless Derek forces them open. That’s what Hale’s do, suffer, but then do what needs doing despite the pain. To spite the pain. Laura words, the red eyes he sees upon waking aren’t Laura’s but they are an Alpha’s.

  
Chestnut hair, not quite long, long enough to start to curl at the ends, a face smudged with dirt and bright blood. The face cracks a wide grin, the teeth are sharp, the smile is all relief though. Derek can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like that.

  
Derek hopes to hell he’s not dead, because if he’s dead the Stiles staring at him is a ghost. It would mean Stiles was dead…and that’s not acceptable, he refuses to accept one more death. Especially not Stiles’.

  
“If only you had that attitude about yourself.” Stiles sneers then pulls him from his grave easily. Supernatural strength. Derek didn’t realize he’s been mumbling in fractured sentences out loud but he can’t find the energy the be embarrassed about it.

  
Stiles half-chuckles, “Always the damsel.” The kid, no not a kid anymore, sounds not at all amused. Like he’s trying to go through the motions of what Derek would expect of him. As if Derek knows what to expect from any-fucking-body at this point.

  
He scowls, which does make Stiles truly laugh, “Don’t worry, big guy, you make a good one. We don’t mind saving you, you haven’t been here too long. Speaking of…”

  
Stiles kicks-in the remnants of a broken down wall then fits both of their bodies through the makeshift doorway. Moving them around and tearing through rubble doesn’t seem to be much of a hardship for him. Stiles being an Alpha werewolf is hard to wrap his mind around, not impossible—not when Kate Argent is walking the earth again like the black plague.

  
For the few minutes it takes them to trudge through the church Derek’s fear and wrath build in waves. Afraid he might still be dreaming and angry his anger is no longer anchoring him in the same way it always had. Something is shifting inside him, slow as tectonic plates and just as inevitable. He’s not sure why but something old in him is crumbling, has been crumbling for a while. A chrysalis.

  
Every step towards fresh air Derek gains strength, his thoughts align, he can hear the gunfire and the vicious snarls of wolves.

  
He doesn’t feel like fighting.

  
He fights anyway.

  
Like Hales always do.

  
Among the wolf’s bane and gun metal, blood and dry dusty soil, Derek catches Laura’s scent for the briefest of moments.

  
***

  
Peter kills Kate Argent for a second time.   
This time there’s no coming back, not for Kate, not for anyone in that many pieces. Out of some sort of responsibility and maybe to stave off the shock of seeing Cora alive, and Boyd and Erica too, Derek helps his Uncle bury the remains after someone pushes a canteen of water in his face. Mostly he wants to put Kate in the ground himself in the last and only way he can.

  
“I couldn’t really look at her at first either.” Peter says, the way he’s examining the gore all over his hands like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world makes Derek think the older wolf is talking about Kate. Then again, he’s always understood his Uncle more than he would like. Of course he means Cora.

  
“She looks like mom.” Derek finishes kicking in sand over Kate leather boots.

  
Peter blinks, “She does, in a certain way…so do you.” His voice is carefully devoid of emotion.

  
Cora is covered in as much blood and dirt as the rest of them. She and Erica had fought flawlessly together, obviously trained. He keeps his distance from them except Peter, despite Derek’s suspicions of him and apparent mutual deep-seated animosity Peter is not an unknown, they are comfortable in their misery.

  
They’re all alive. Not unchanged, but alive. That’s all Derek ever asked for.

  
He destroys the urge to buckle to the ground and let the tears he’s been keeping back for so fucking long fall. Stiles catches his gaze and smiles, on a quiet battlefield littered in hunter bodies and the bodies of creatures Peter tells them are berserkers, Derek tentatively smiles back.

  
Ignoring the tension from the Hales around him Boyd is focusing on dragging hunter bodies—the Calaveras who followed Kate, into some sort of pattern, he soaks it all down in gasoline the hunters had brought with them then sets it aflame with a pilfered Zippo lighter.

  
Derek doesn’t recognize the symbol as the same one once painted on the door of his old house until the flames die down into a simplified blackened form of smoking human bodies. Stiles and his pack don’t seem very perturbed about it.

  
Stiles strolls up to hang off Boyd’s shoulder grinning like a maniac, “That’s a thing now, huh?”

  
Boyd shrugs, quietly smug.

  
“Good.” Erica hangs off Boyd’s other side only she puts her face right into the junction of his neck and flashes ruby eyes at the hunter’s bodies, “Hunters have gone too long without a boogeyman.”

  
The part of Derek that is all hatred and bitterness howls, yes, they fucking have.

Cora and Peter share a look, quick and pain-filled that Derek can commiserate with but doesn’t know how to show…anything. At least not right now.

  
A sweltering orange dawn breaks as the last of the smoke drifts into the sky, for once, Derek doesn’t feel sick at the smell.

 

***

  
Derek has a panic attack on the way to wherever the hell they were taking him, Erica says “home” easy as you please, he wakes up from sleeping in the back of one of the SUV’s Stiles commandeered from the dead hunters. The space is too small and smells of aconite bullets, for a second he can’t force himself to move and doubt creeps in. He was never rescued. Kate is still alive. Stiles, Cora, Erica, and Boyd aren’t. It would be just like his mind to come up with a dead sister to save him.

  
Suddenly there are warm hands on his hunched shoulders, gentle however insistent. It’s hard to breathe, he hadn’t realized he’d stopped.

  
“In and out, c’mon Derek.” Stiles’ voice sounds like he’s speaking through a thin wall. There’s a rustling sound and then Stiles is in the backseat with him, his hands move from Derek’s back to the center of his chest and then up to scruff of his neck. Even mid panic attack the Alpha in him grumbles, his vulnerability is not going unmarked. He gets over it, because it’s Stiles. Of course he gets it over it.

  
Stiles, not too surprisingly, knows what he’s doing. He starts a gentle count down with Derek in tandem with a breathing exercise that Derek’s not unfamiliar with. Laura tried with him, she really did. Read all the right things, short of sending him off to a psychiatrist they did everything. Derek just wasn’t the most accepting of help back then, it was easier to bury himself in books and punishing work outs. For once, he lets himself be helped.

  
Derek matches his breath to Stiles’.

  
“It’s going to be okay.” Says Stiles softly, for a moment, fleeting and devastating, Stiles’ voice sounds a lot like Laura’s.

  
The next time he’s really awake he can smell the ocean.

  
***

  
Eating breakfast with the…the Alpha pack, is a snap and snarl and bright laughter thing. Like and unlike Derek’s own memories of childhood, the Hales were never so wild though. His Mom cultivated their image to the public at home before sending her kids out into the world, the family secret was paramount to all else.

  
It’s disconcerting, the aura around them feels like Deucalion’s ruins, an oncoming storm, but it’s muted under family. They’re in tune with their wolves as well as any born wolf.

  
The Sheriff’s presence is a surprise, it’s evident having a human around was grounding for them. Necessary. These kids understood that all on their own with apparently very little teaching from Peter.

While Derek and Peter clean up the massive amount of dishes left in the pack’s wake Peter explains in the same breezy manner Erica explains everything—the two are friends and that’s honestly one of the more frightening things to come out of all this, “They had a nice little nature retreat in the Mojave, does wonders for the pack bonds.”

  
The thought of an Alpha pack had been so jarring, now it was strangely easy to be around. Not combative or annoyingly abrasive in the way he had been expecting being around other Alpha’s would be.

  
“Oh, yeah,” Stiles says sneaking up on them to hand over a mostly empty literal gallon of orange juice, “It was very Burning Man.” He slides his body very deliberately by Derek’s on the way to the fridge. Stiles may have been an Alpha but Derek hasn’t been scent-marked by anyone in a painfully long time. He leans into it, just a little. Peter smirks but says nothing.

  
Peter is different too, no less dangerous but less cutting and more settled. Derek doesn’t know what to think about it. About them. Trusting Peter fully ever again was going to be impossible, neither were dead-set on changing that either. The longer Derek stays with them the more edges get worn off their old relationship. Cora helps the most in that regard. She refuses to have the family she has left not stand to be in the same room as the other. Derek can’t say no to her. He doubts he’ll ever be able to.

  
She’s very stand-offish with him despite her insistence Peter and Derek get along. It hurts. He understands. The two of them are made of too many sharp pieces to fit together in a way that won’t slice into either of them. Giving up wasn’t an option though, never was, especially not with the only sister he had left.

  
***

  
Food is a Big Deal in the pack’s house, Derek learns this quickly. Food is War. You either choose a side or get the hell out of the way. In most cases the Sheriff is Switzerland and it’s him Derek gravitates to when the winds start to blow in a certain direction. It’s not hiding, Derek is an Alpha and a grown-ass man, but he’s seen with his own two eyes how easily Boyd and Cora tossed Stiles out to deep end of the ocean like a flailing life raft only to come back spluttering with revenge in his eyes. Now there’s been some sort of scuffle in the kitchen, all of the younger wolves including Peter are suspiciously missing.

  
Derek wanders into the kitchen fully on the Sheriff’s heels. He resolutely does not flinch when the back door into the house slams open. In comes Erica, head thrown back in raucous laughter holding a mammoth size dish of steaming lasagna out in front of her. She pays them no mind and dashes through kitchen into the living room and then out the front door, she’s followed close behind by an equally rowdy trio of Stiles, Erica, and Boyd. They’re so light, devoid of the burdens Beacon Hills placed on them. Derek is happy for them, but he doesn’t think he can be like that. Not Yet.

  
The Sheriff shakes his head at the young wolves’ antics. He opens his mouth to make a characteristically sly comment but he’s cut off by the backdoor slamming open one more time. Peter stalks in holding a different uncooked dish of lasagna. He silently places the dish in the oven that’s still radiating a minimum amount of heat then carefully shuts it with a strangely threatening amount of care.

  
Peter flashes his eyes at them, “Guard this with your miserable lives.” He turns on his heel then angrily makes his way after the pack.

  
The Sheriff calls after him, “No maiming in this house, Peter! Or outside!”

  
The older man sighs with his whole body when Peter doesn’t answer but he doesn’t appear too bothered.

  
“He’d never really hurt ‘em. Besides, I carry wolf’s bane now.” The Sheriff gives Derek an incredibly uncomfortable look he can’t fathom the meaning of before dutifully dragging a chair to sit in front of the oven taking his guardian role seriously.

  
Its awkward for a couple of tense seconds, the Sheriff is keeping something back and Derek can’t take it anymore. He tries not to sound too annoyed when he asks, “What is it?”

  
“…Know anything about mermaids?”

  
***

  
A couple of weeks in living with the pack Derek finds himself lying on the beach at midnight listening to waves rumbling against the shore and staring at an nearly full waxing moon. The sand is getting in his hair, sands everywhere here, he doesn’t mind. He’s occupied by other things, like Stiles lying right next to him just as careless of the sand. It’s the calmest he’s been in a long time.

  
Stiles isn’t quite touching him, even so he can feel his body heat all along his side. More heat than a human body was capable of putting out without a fever. Stiles never chose this but it was obvious being a wolf meant something to him in a way Derek had tried and failed to impress on Scott. Derek would be lying if he said he hadn’t ever thought of offering the bite to Stiles. When he first became Alpha the thought was…hard to ignore. He hadn’t acted on the instinct instead choosing betas he thought he had something to offer, betas that would be loyal. They were loyal, just not to him. That smarts. He couldn’t blame them and seeing them whole was more important than anything else. The two were still awkward around him, neither side knew how to fix it.

  
Stiles shifts on to his elbows and looks at him sidelong, he’s beautiful in the moonlight. He’s beautiful in any light but Derek knows that look. He’s about to make him talk about something uncomfortable. Stiles has always been sort of brutal that way, says what he needs to say, makes others do the same. There were never any punches pulled. Derek contemplates braving the hordes of mosquitoes that are waiting in the reeds between the shore and the house.

  
Stiles huffs out a breath, “You’re leaving soon, huh?”

  
Derek’s throat constricts, “I—”

  
“I get it dude.”

  
“Don’t call me dude.”

  
Stiles laughs then intones his voice with a shitty English accent, “There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” he flicks a bunch of tiny seashells onto Derek’s flank, “there must always be a Hale in Beacon Hills.”

  
Derek rolls his eyes however the sentiment isn’t that far off, which was…embarrassing.

  
The gleam in Stiles’ eye tells Derek he’s clocking his emotions perfectly, Stiles looks away, shrugs, “Peter knew before me. He won’t say so but he’s…pleased, I guess. He was never really okay with leaving the land there. The land is in the Hale blood, right? I don’t know how that feels but I bet it’s kinda important. You aren’t built to give up anything easily.”

  
He doesn’t know if Stiles means Derek specifically or any of Hales he’s come to know.

  
Derek grumbles, “Maybe he just wants to get rid of me.”

  
Stiles throws his head back to laugh and Derek doesn’t hide his stare, “Entirely possible.”

  
There was no world Derek could have imagined where he was the one making Stiles laugh all the time without even trying, a world in which he could stare because he was allowed. Stiles stares too—is staring back right now.

  
Stiles stops, levels him with a heady look and asks, “This okay?”

  
Derek nods, unsure of what he is agreeing to and doesn’t care, anything would be okay—anything Stiles is willing to give. Stiles studies his face a moment, checking for any sign to the contrary and for all his newfound power looking painfully young.

  
Finding nothing to sway him otherwise Stiles swings his long legs over to straddle Derek, he aligns their hips then leans down, Derek surges up to meet him half way holding onto Stiles’ thighs half for leverage and half because he just has to. He has to hold him there as long as he can before life, or the ocean, or fucking fate tries pulling them apart again. Stiles digs his fingers into Derek’s shoulders and deepens the kiss. He can feel the hint of fangs in that wet heat, Derek grins at the proof that Stiles’ control wasn’t impeccable after all.

  
Derek lifts Stiles up then flips them over and settles in between Stiles’ spread legs. Heat coils low in his abdomen, Derek can’t control his hips from rolling forward, every little bit of contact sends shocky little waves of pleasure up his body. They only reluctantly detach from each other when Erica starts wolf-whistling from the house. Menace.

  
Yes, he had to go back to Beacon Hills. There lied his responsibilities. But here? In this house by the beach lied his heart. He would go back to Beacon Hills but he would come back here too. As long as the pack will let him, as long as Stiles will let him.

  
***

  
Stiles leaves him with advice to consider on the plane ride back to California. Some of it was just Stiles being Stiles, a little bit mean with an undercurrent of truth. He’d fucked up with Scott. Stiles doesn’t condemn Derek in the least, Scott wouldn’t have listened to anyone as far as Allison was concerned and will never be completely okay with being a werewolf. People deal with choice being taken away from them in different ways. The situation wasn’t fair to anyone. Stiles is convinced Scott will come around, that all Derek needs is patience and to not cut himself off from everyone, ironic advice from the guy whose first instinct was to get the hell out of the country.

  
For now, Scott was secondary—he doesn’t want to be pack. Isaac mattered first, he had refused to leave him and Derek had been returning that loyalty with neglect. Fixing it was going to be rough when he had no idea where to begin. He’d gotten Stiles’ new number, Cora’s too, but he refused to buy a new phone for himself until he was in town. It made sense but mostly he didn’t want to text Stiles the whole way like an idiot. The urge was new and distracting.

  
Derek turns in his seat to stare out the tiny plane window and obsesses over how to talk to his own beta.

  
By the time he’s at his own door feeling wildly misplaced he’s still got nothing. Sorry seemed overused and pointless; Derek wasn’t great at apologies anyway.

  
There’s no more time for half-assed excuses.

  
There are teenagers in his loft.

  
Isaac, Scott, Allison, and Lydia are all standing on their feet with varied degrees of shock on their faces. A map of Mexico and hunter-marked shotgun shells cover his only table while miscellaneous trash lies everywhere like they had been more or less living here for a while. Now that he thinks about it Derek has no idea how long he’s been gone. Everything got turned upside down inside that tomb and it wasn’t like Stiles’ pack had jobs to make the days matter, much to the Sheriff’s consternation.

  
He opens his mouth but is cut-off by Isaac barreling into him for a hug. Isaac’s eyes glow beta yellow, his own flash red in answer.

  
“Oh my God, dude! We’ve been looking for you!” Scott exclaims the rather obvious, he’s smiling. Derek tries not to put that simple gesture up there with seeing berserkers and Kate Argent alive again. But it’s a close thing.

  
That Stiles and the others are alive and safe and fucking free in the best way weighs heavy on his tongue. It’s not his story tell.

  
***

  
“Are you sure this is right?” Isaac says doubtfully.

  
Derek snatches the assembly instructions from him with a growl.

  
Isaac huffs, “I’m just saying…the names don’t match, Derek.”

  
The Alpha continues to scowl and glances over their collected Ikea boxes. The bookshelf was supposed to be easiest to put together and yet Derek’s been drawing on that newfound reservoir of calm as to not tear all these pieces of shitty board apart. He doesn’t. Obviously. And he won’t trash anything, at least not until Isaac and Scott meet up to do whatever the hell it is they do together.

  
He shores up the little patience he has and reminds himself: Isaac deserves furniture. The boxes Derek had shipped from his storage unit in New York after he settled back into the loft have yet to arrive but they will need shelves and dressers. Most of his shit was books along with some clothes and the precious few photographs. Laura thought he read too much, she saw it as the escape it was. He read, worked out, avoided people, rinse and repeat. All her efforts to socialize him, help him any way she could were met with a carefully constructed wall of anger. Derek hid, Laura barreled on in front of him cutting a path so he didn’t have to. Now she’s gone and Derek finds himself bumbling along without direction. But this. This he can do.

  
He can put together a fucking bookshelf.

  
He tosses the instructions over his shoulder and holds out his hand, “Screwdriver.”

  
Isaac hands it over with something like laughter threatening to explode out of him.

  
“Where’s the—”

  
Isaac hands him a bag of screws and bolts too.

  
Derek mumbles his thanks and starts guess-timating what goes where. Eventually they end up with sturdy-ish mostly recognizable bookshelf.

  
Isaac looks at it like it’s a miracle.

  
***

  
Derek calls Stiles on a Monday afternoon and tries not to sound too disappointed when his father answers instead. Stiles was toting his pack around Mexico City looking at the cities’ most prominent university as a first step in a long line of planned college visits. He’s not sure how they managed transcripts or test scores, he doesn’t ask either figuring Peter had something to do with it.

  
The Sheriff, really he was always going to be the Sheriff in Derek’s head no matter how many times the man tells him to call him by name, gives him something else that both lifts weight from his shoulders and forms a pit in his stomach.

  
Derek can tell his pack about them, that they’re alive, well, and never coming back to Beacon Hills.

  
“He’s sure?”

  
There’s a moment of static over the line, wind, he can hear Peter talking just out of earshot and the Sheriff shushing him, “He’s sure. And Derek, the door’s always open for you. Don’t forget that, son.”

  
The last time someone called Derek ‘son’ was the afternoon his Dad dropped him off for basketball practice the night his family burned alive. His throat clicks, “Thank you.”

  
“Eventually the door will open for the rest of them too. But Stiles is, well hell, you know how is. A wolf thing I guess. Baby steps is the best way to go I figure.”

  
Baby steps. Derek looks around his loft full of furniture. There’s a fruit bowl on his kitchen island with actual fruit in it and a stack of blu-rays next to a modest flatscreen TV. The boxes from New York arrived a week ago but sit unpacked, stacked neatly in the corner of his bedroom as to not draw too much attention. Some of the items inside still carry Laura’s scent.

  
“Yeah.” Derek agrees, “Baby steps.”

  
***

  
Two weeks after being told he could Derek tells Scott where Stiles is and what happened to him. Scott rails at him and Derek lets him, he cries on his shirt and lets him do that too.

  
He tells Isaac separately over breakfast and doesn’t see him again until the next day.

They don’t talk for a while. Even without the talking the loft isn’t as quiet as it could be.

  
Days later Scott and Lydia are there. Lydia says to declare allegiance, she’s tired of not being in the know. Scott’s face sours at the word ‘allegiance’ but doesn’t say anything to contradict her.

  
“No more lying.” Scott says.

  
Derek nods, “ No more lying.”

  
***

  
Derek stares at the animal clinic thinking about what it would be like having a dog. Some dogs liked werewolves just fine; others kind of hated their guts. It would be nice, to have something that was perpetually happy to see him. Maybe not now, maybe not ever, but still, maybe—a maybe that never existed before.

  
Deaton comes out after a few minutes, giving in to Derek’s purposely obvious posturing move. He doesn’t care how obvious he’s being, Derek doesn’t owe his Mother’s old emissary anything. Especially now.

  
“Derek.” Deaton coolly nods from the doorway of the clinic.

  
Internally Derek rolls his eyes, outwardly he glowers, “You say you’re no longer the Hale emissary.”

  
“My…duty of care, died with Talia.”

  
The urge to snap his fangs is strong enough to make him take a step forward. Tension rolls off Deaton in waves, he smells of cats, dogs, and mountain ash.

  
“But you still practice on Hale land.” Derek’s not talking about animal medicine.

  
“I do basic—”

  
“I don’t care.”

  
Deaton blinks, “I see.”

  
“No. You don’t.” Derek can tell what he’s thinking, that this is the Hale Alpha throwing him off Hale land. That’s not what he’s doing. Yet.

  
“Then enlighten me.” The vet’s tone of voice is politely hostile.

  
Derek’s smile is all hostile and not at all polite, “Lydia Martin. You already know she’s a banshee, you’ve probably known for a while. She has some magical ability and she wants to use it. Give her emissary training.”

  
“Or?”

  
“Or you leave my territory.”

  
Strangely Deaton doesn’t look offended, or very afraid for that matter. He’s smiling slightly then nods, “So be it. Tell Ms. Martin to meet with me tomorrow afternoon after closing.”

  
Okay, yeah, he was expecting more resistance, perhaps some bloodier threats because that’s just his life. Things don’t come easy. He schools his face into a practiced blankness.

  
“I may have given up my duty of care, Derek, but as long as there is a Hale pack on this land I don’t wish for them to fail. You’ve grown, Talia would be—”

  
“I don’t need you tell me what my Mom would’ve thought of me.” Derek says firmly.

  
Peter had told Derek he was like his Mother, maliciously, soaked in bitterness…and yet. His heartbeat never lied about Talia. Too diplomatic. Too noble. But strong. Derek doesn’t mind being like his Mom. And he knows far more certain than his Mom’s absent emissary how she would feel about Derek coming as far as he has. She would be happy he was admitting progress to himself at all. He hopes, she would be proud. He thinks she would be.

  
He doesn’t give Deaton a courtesy farewell or the middle finger he briefly considered, he simply turns on his heel, gets into his Camaro and leaves the clinic in his rearview.

  
***

  
The youth’s love for road trips is going to kill him. Derek realizes this thirty minutes down the interstate. He would have paid for the plane tickets himself without a second thought but no, the _youths_ want the “real” roadtrip experience. Whatever the fuck that is.

  
He’s aware he’s not got that many years on any of them. The torment of being in the car with Scott and Isaac and Lydia Martin for hours on end has aged him prematurely. Lydia refuses to give up control of the radio. Scott needs the bathroom every hour and won’t stop mentioning Allison’s absence. As if Chris Argent would let his daughter out of city limits in a car full of werewolves. Isaac is always thirsty. But when Derek asks them if they need or want anything when they stop for gas it’s always no.

  
Derek’s imagined leaving them at McDonald's way too many times to be healthy. This pack bonding thing is so overrated.

  
Lydia starts flipping through the stations again when they pass through a major city, Derek flashes his eyes and growls. Lydia meets him dead in the eye and stares. Derek stops growling. He’s definitely leaving them at a McDonald’s the next chance he gets.

  
Sure, he’ll come back after some peace and quiet. Maybe.

  
At the very least they’re willing to drive. A luxury he didn’t have when he was following Laura from New York to their old hometown. He hadn’t even slept during that drive, he stopped at gas stations only and that was it.

It’s impossible not to think about that. Isaac fingers clutch his shoulder from the back seat briefly, enough to send a shiver of worry through their bond. Derek relaxes the white-knuckled grip he has on the steering wheel.  
Isaac catches his eye through the rearview mirror, “Good?”

  
Derek nods, “Yeah. Good.”

  
His ready confirmation earns an assessing look from Lydia, whatever she’s looking for he checks out. She smiles a little then turns the station to something very Pop. Very very Pop. Jesus fucking Christ save him from the youths.

  
***

  
The Sheriff, ‘don’t call him Sheriff’, is waiting for them outside the house, the place has grown by quite a bit since Derek last saw it. A part of the roof is covered by a small tarp like there’s been some sort of storm damage but there’s already a stack of new roofing materials in the front yard.

  
“Wow.” Lydia says impressed but acting like she’s not, “I was imagining a little more Old Man by the Sea. This is…not bad.”

  
Scott’s heart is already beating fast. Derek knows the Sheriff didn’t leave Beacon Hills on great terms with anyone, he hadn’t pried into it. Would really like to avoid it at all costs actually.

  
“Scott,” Derek tries not to bark his name, “he won’t bite. We were invited.” For the whole summer actually. Their last before everyone is off to college.

  
Scott nods frantically, Isaac leans into him to comfort and it seems to work. Isaac is getting good at that, calming pack members without even trying. He was always the calmest of the betas Derek bit, he thought that would have been Boyd. Quiet is often mistaken for calm, they aren’t the same thing.

  
“Well then,” Lydia tosses her hair over her shoulder, “I for one need to get out of this car and far away from boy stink. Let’s go.”

  
There’s a pause before they all follow her lead. She marches right up to Sheriff with a smile and sticks her hand out for a handshake, the Sheriff takes it with an amused grin. It’s a good start.

  
Then Derek is hit by a familiar scent, the front door of the house flies open and the scent grows stronger. It makes the more feral part of him puff up a little. Makes a smile break out on his face without his consent when he can finally see him. Scott hesitates for a long moment before he’s off like a rocket. They catch each other in a hug.

  
“Hey, buddy.” Stiles softly says into Scott’s shoulder.

  
Scott squeezes him tighter, “Oh my god, dude.”

  
They don’t smell like each other’s pack but they do smell like the contentment of family. If they smiled any harder their faces were going to crack. Isaac rushes past them into Erica and Boyd waiting at the door. Derek can’t see them but he can hear Cora and Peter arguing inside, about food of course.

  
Stiles moves away from Scott with a parting pat and strolls up to Derek, wraps his arms around his shoulders and leans in to kiss him so smoothly it makes Derek’s toes curl.

  
“Hey.” Stiles says into his mouth.

  
Derek smiles and ignores the sounds of curiosity and outright squawking around them, “Hey.”

  
“Break it up boys.” The Sheriff calls, “Why don’t you all come inside? Make yourselves at home.”

  
With his pack and Stiles’ finally coming together for once that sounds easy. Stiles threads his fingers into Derek’s and pulls him along.

 

 

 

end

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been banging around my head while I was trying to write Shovels and Dirt and had to put something down, its kinda a mess but well, oh well. I didn’t mean for it to be two parts. I was going to give these kids a soft ending in Mexico, but then it just kept going because my bitch ass loves drama??? So the second part (if ya’ll are interested) will be from Derek’s pov. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Title from We Must be Killers by Mikky Ekko  
> Quote from Desperado by Rihanna


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